A Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) is used to route an incoming emergency call to a specific call taker within a public safety answering point (PSAP). The CPE may be used in, for example, an emergency system such as a 9-1-1 emergency system. In particular, the CPE may include an automatic call distributor (ACD) that implements routing rules to determine to which call taker (also referred to herein as operator position or call operator) an incoming call should be directed. For example, the routing rules can include rules for routing the incoming call away from specific call takers if the specific call takers are currently busy with taking other calls. The routing rules can also include rules for routing, for example, the incoming call to call takers in a round robin fashion, rules for ensuring that incoming calls are answered in the order received, or rules for queuing incoming calls until a call taker is available.
Future emergency systems are expected to define additional routing criteria to be used in the PSAP and in an Emergency Services IP Network (ESInet). The ESInet is an Internet Protocol (IP) network that includes call routing applications for routing calls to an appropriate PSAP based on the routing rules implemented in the ESInet call routing applications. Routing rules implemented in the ESInet call routing applications could include rules for determining, for example, the operating hours of a PSAP. If, for example, the operating hours of the PSAP are between 8:00 am and 5:00 pm, routing rules implemented in the ESInet call routing applications could include rules for routing emergency calls received outside of the PSAP operating hours to a neighboring PSAP. Routing rules implemented in the ESInet call routing applications could also include rules for routing emergency calls based on the language spoken by the caller, the geographic location of the caller, or the type of incident associated with the emergency call.
In order to take advantage of the capabilities of future emergency systems, operators of smaller PSAPs (for example, those PSAPs with fewer call takers than a predefined threshold) may want to combine the operating capabilities of several smaller PSAPs to dynamically form a larger, virtual PSAP. This will allow a smaller PSAP to serve, for example, as a backup PSAP for another smaller PSAP when call overflow occurs at the other PSAP. Consider the example where a traffic accident occurs on a highway and many passing motorists call into the emergency response system to report the accident. Today, if the incoming calls are sent to a smaller PSAP with only two call takers, the telephones at the target PSAP will ring until one of the call takers is available to answer each call. With future emergency systems, the incoming calls can be distributed to other PSAPs in the virtual PSAP.
In addition, smaller PSAPs typically combine call taking and dispatching positions (i.e. one resource/call taker serves both roles). Therefore, in these PSAPs, one call taker may be used to dispatch emergency resources to an incident, manage the emergency resources via a computer-aided display (CAD), communicate with the emergency resources via a radio system, and answer other incoming emergency calls. Existing call routing rules implemented in the ACD or in the ESInet call routing applications do not route incoming emergency calls based on status information received from other systems associated with the call taker, for example, based on status information received from a CAD or a radio system used by the call taker. Instead, current ACD and ESInet call routing application algorithms only use information known to the emergency call handling system to implement the routing rules. Therefore, it is possible to route an incoming emergency call to a call taker that may already be busy performing dispatching or other functions associated with ongoing emergency incident(s).
Accordingly, a method is needed for using status information obtained from other systems associated with emergency response management to determine a true availability of a call taker to answer emergency calls and route the emergency calls accordingly.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of embodiments of the present invention.
The apparatus and method components have been represented where appropriate by conventional symbols in the drawings, showing only those specific details that are pertinent to understanding the embodiments of the present invention so as not to obscure the disclosure with details that will be readily apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art having the benefit of the description herein.